Scott Powers
Monday night’s crowd sourcing-based debate between two of Florida’s U.S. Senate candidates may be a harbinger of future political debates, from the presidential race to school board contests.
Monday at 7 p.m. Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly and Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson will square off in an internet webcast debate fueled by questions submitted and voted on over the internet.
While the debate is controversial within Florida because it leaves out other Republican and Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Senate, nationally it’ll be seen as a beta test of the format.
“Once we’re done with the Florida debate, we are turning our attention towards the presidential election,” said Lilia Tamm, program coordinator for the debate’s organizer, the Open Debate Coalition.
That group, founded in 2008, is an odd mix of high-profile bedfellows, including conservative activists such as Grover Norquist, the president of Americans For Tax Reform; progressive activists such as Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women; and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.com.
It’s been trying for years to work out new debate formats, with a crowd-sourcing angle via the internet. It tried a debate once previously, in a 2013 congressional primary election in Massachusetts. But that debate was barely noticed and now long forgotten.
This time they have two sitting congressman running for one of the nation’s most hotly contested and important U.S. Senate seats. And one candidate, Grayson, offers a history that suggests to the organizers that he is capable of saying anything; while Jolly could have a fresh national media spotlight glow, from a “60 Minutes” CBS News show profile to be broadcast Sunday night.
And the event is being billed in some circles as a warm-up for the presidential election.
“We’ve been working with leaders from the Commission on Presidential Debates for perhaps six months to a year,” Tamm said. “They have been looking at different ways that they can bring a new, innovative touch into the presidential format. We submitted proposals to them and talked to them a lot about how things are going in Florida.
“They’re watching us very closely. Mike McCurry, who is one of the co-chairs, said they are watching this debate with great interest,” she added.
But the group is not just looking at presidential debates. She said the open format would be made available for candidates in future political debates at any level of elected government, down to very local races such as those for school board seats.
Grayson, the Orlando Democrat, and Jolly, the Republican from Seminole, were picked for this experiment because in February the pair announced their desire to debate each other one-on-one, she said. That gave the coalition potential volunteers, and they accepted.
Yet that created an inclusiveness controversy because Grayson has a tough Democratic primary coming up Aug. 30 with U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter; and Jolly has several major opponents in the Republican primary: U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, businessman Todd Wilcox of Orlando, and businessman Carlos Beruff of Bradenton.
The Open Debate Coalition considered expanding the field and decided to use the Commission on Presidential Debates standard, qualifying candidates that drew at least 15 percent averages in polls. Only Jolly, Grayson and Murphy qualified, and Murphy declined an invitation, Tamm said.
For the Jolly-Grayson debate, the organization is taking question submissions and votes over the website FloridaOpenDebate.com. Question submissions and voting on which ones are best started on Tuesday and by Friday afternoon more than 230,000 votes had been cast.
On Friday afternoon, the most popular question, with more than 3,100 votes was, “Would you vote in favor of a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United?”
Among the least popular (only one vote so far) of the more than 700 questions submitted: “U.S. is richest nation in world, but the 13th happiest. Why the disparity?”
Jolly and Grayson will be together in Orlando. The debate will be webcast from the FloridaOpenDebate.com site. Audio and video feeds will be available for free to any media that want to carry them.
A moderator from the left, from the group The Young Turks, and from the right, from The Independent Journal Review, will select from the most popular questions Monday night and present them.
“We’ve balanced everything so that there is a left and a right moderator, a left and a right candidate and a left and a right cohost. We have the Progressive Change Institute and the Americans For Tax Reform,” hosting the debate, Tamm said.
